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Today I found myself feeling so excited for the new earth that God will make. For the unfathomable wholeness I will enjoy, among others, in God’s presence.

Earlier in the day, I looked at my wedding band and for some reason thought back to the day hubs put it on my hand. I felt again in my stomach that fluttery anxiousness, that joy mixed with fear. For it was a solemn and very good thing. And I wanted it so much.

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It is profound, in our relative ignorance, to agree to a lifelong covenant. To pledge ourselves to not only the person before us, but to all the people they will become – with whom we have never been acquainted.

To me, this is the very best kind of promise. It does not rely on emotion or circumstances or the other party’s actions or ours. It relies on the deepest love, the one displayed in a God who desires our nearness to Himself, despite our wrongdoing toward Him. Despite our transgression, this God made and remains faithful to an eternal covenant.

I get to represent a miniature version of that with my husband in a broken way. But there is coming a time out of time when the creating, redeeming God will make everything new, and in those days, we will be with Him, and He will be everything to us.

And what depth of community and joy and peace will we experience. And what light, what glory. And what beauty and music and health and life.

The yearning to be one with another human, united in covenant, ought to pale in the face of our desire for the fullness of God to renew the earth. It must be but a reflection of our hunger for knowing God in this present moment. No human has the capacity to satisfy us so completely, to set us at rest and embrace us entirely and eternally.

Come, Lord Jesus.

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